Swing Hammer Swing!

the long version

"Jeff Torrington's startlingly original first novel is set in Glasgow, Scotland, during a single-week in the late sixties. Christmas is approaching, and Thomas Clay is beset with mounting problems: his wife is in the maternity hospital prematurely; he's waiting for news of their transfer to "Legoland" high-rise housing - or for his tenement to be demolished beneath his very feet; he has no job, and his novel is, as yet, unpublished. Staggering from crisis to crisis, Thomas Clay is a man pursued - by petty gangsters, his Mafia-like in-laws, a doppelganger, and by time itself. He may imagine he has evaded the tyranny of clocks by escaping the nine-to-five, but no matter how fast he runs, the Grim Reaper seems cold on his heels."--BOOK JACKET.